Global Policy Forum

The United Nations is prepared to start setting up a Sierra Leone war crimes tribunal after donor nations pledged nearly enough money for its first year of operations, even though contributions for the second and third years have fallen short.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called on the donors to deposit the $15 million they committed for the first year of the U.N. court into a trust fund within 30 days, a U.N. spokesman said on Monday. If the deposits are made, Annan will ask the U.N. Legal Counsel to finalize an agreement establishing a tribunal to prosecute about 20 alleged ringleaders of Sierra Leone's 10-year civil war for atrocities committed in the West African country. During that conflict, anti-government Revolutionary United Front, or RUF, rebels horrified the world by raping, killing and chopping off the limbs of thousands of civilians and forcing some 5,400 children into combat by abducting them or drugging them into submission.

Donors have pledged about $15 million of an estimated $16.8 million needed to run the court for the first year, the U.N. spokesman said. But the United Nations estimates that $57 million is needed to keep the court going for three years. In addition to the 15 million promised for the first year, donors have pledged $20.4 million for the second and third years. Though Annan hopes commitments for the full $57 million will be in place before he moves forward, he is no longer insisting on it to begin establishing the court.

''Once he gets the money over the next 30-day period in the trust fund, then he will begin proceeding,'' U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said. The U.N. Security Council voted last year to set up the tribunal in the Sierra Leone capital Freetown to try people charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes and other serious violations of international law during the brutal civil war.

The United Nations has already slashed the court's budget from an original estimate of $114 million to $57 million for three years. The court could be up and running a few months after the Legal Counsel finalizes the agreement. ''Within the next year, you could see it doing some of its work,'' he said.

Fund-raising problems arose because the United Nations has insisted that the court be financed through voluntary contributions rather than an assessment to all U.N. members, as was done for special tribunals hearing cases on the Balkan wars and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Haq said he could not reveal the names of the donor countries or say how many there were. But there has been talk of the Bush administration pledging more than $5 million for the first year and Britain pledging $1 million for initial planning.